Catching My Breath

Let's see. Looking at the calendar, I think I have might have two weeks, maybe three, if I'm lucky, to slow down and breathe a little before things pick back up again.

Baseball season is finally over. Jared finished his coach pitch team the second week of July. I forgot to sign him up for soccer this year, but he says he's okay with it. Adam's team did well in their baseball tournament. They took 3rd place out of 16 teams. Adam had fun and ended the season with with a single and an inning of playing 2nd base, after spending most of the season in the outfield. After winning the consolation game to take 3rd place, I heard him saying, "Best season ever!" It was good to see him enjoying it. This next week he will finish up swim team. He best times in the regular meets have qualified him to swim in the Silver meet at County. He is also talking about taking lifesaving and water safety instructor courses in the future, so he can prepare to teach swim lessons and life guard at the pool when he is old enough to get a job. It's nice to have our community pool is so close to our home. We get a family pass every summer and take as much advantage of it as we can. Adam and Ryan are both old enough to swim without an adult, so they head over there quite often to swim with friends too.

Ryan just started practices for his competition soccer team. I sat and watched them for awhile the other night, because the coach had asked parents to be there for a meeting. I was really impressed with him--his coaching skills, his knowledge of the game, and especially the way he interacted with the players. He's expecting a lot of them, but he communicates it in a very positive way. I think it will be a great experience for Ryan to play for him. Ryan is excited to start 5th grade in a few weeks. We got an email from his teacher, asking him to practice typing, cursive, and times tables each week until school starts. It's hard to think about school in the middle of the summer, but he doesn't seem to mind.

All the boys finished the summer reading program at the library. They've been reading 15-20 minutes a day, five days a week, since the first week of June. They'll keep doing that even though the program is over, but I'll switch to encouragement mode, rather than "you have to get all your chores and reading and piano practicing done before you can have screen time" mode. Now they just have to do chores and Adam has to practice piano.

There are lots of changes going on around here, some of which are nicely facilitating my "breathing time." I decided to step down from the Library Board in June, after 3+ years of service. It was a great experience and helped me get to know our community after we moved here. I enjoyed it, but felt like I needed to put more volunteer hours in at my kids' schools. With all four of them at different schools next year, I'm sure I'll be busy enough.

Then, last Sunday our stake presidency canceled regular church meetings and held a special stake meeting--to reorganize ward boundaries. Every single ward in our stake was shaken up, most pretty drastically. We were moved from our ward of four years to a new ward made up of parts of four old wards. Everyone who was moved to a new ward was automatically released from their callings, so I am no longer the Primary president. I will miss the kids and especially the wonderful ladies I served with in the presidency. We attended our new ward for the first time today--sacrament meeting only. Our new bishop and his wife gave great talks. They introduced themselves and we learned that they met in a "military ward" in Virginia shortly after he returned from the Viet Nam War. (Sound familiar Mom?) He is from Hawaii, originally. By way of introduction, his counselor told us that he likes to give hugs, and he loves luaus. Our first ward activity will be a luau in mid-August. This change is going to take some adjusting for all of us--particularly Adam, who was attached to his deacon friends and Young Men leaders--but it will be an adventure and an opportunity to grow. Jared was happy to learn that several boys he knew from school are in our new ward, and it looks like there are some Ryan's and Dallin's ages too. Hopefully Adam will find some as well. We are sad to leave the friends we made in our old ward, but at least this time we don't have to pack any boxes to do it, and we don't really have to say good-bye either.

I've decided my motto is, "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, the other gold." We've made so many wonderful friends in all the places we've lived. We love keeping in touch with them. (And living in Utah, we get to see many of them when they pass through. We visited with one family we knew in Texas last week, and we're having dinner with with four different families this week--two we knew in Cincinnati, and two we knew in Texas.) For Family Home Evening last Monday, Jeff took us all to Provo for a little "family history tour." We ate dinner at the Malt Shoppe on University Avenue, then drove around and showed the kids all the apartments we lived while we were dating and first married. Then he talked to the boys about all the places we've moved to, the good friends we've made, the wonderful experiences we've had, and the memories we've made. Then we talked about the changes in our ward and how we have the opportunity to grow and make new friends, just like our family has done many times through the years. It was a fun trip down memory lane, and hopefully an effective lesson. At least it kept the kids attention and they weren't wrestling on the couch, like normal. :-)

I feel like I'm rambling, but I'll finish up with this. We have a 16-year-old German girl coming in a few weeks to live with us and go to our local high school for the coming school year. She is the youngest daughter of a family Jeff first met as a missionary in East Germany. I'm not completely sure I'm prepared to deal with a teenager, or a girl, but we are excited that she got all the red tape worked out so she can come. It will be another adventure for us. Mostly I worry that she will get homesick, but I guess we'll cross that bridge if we get to it. In preparation for her arrival, we have to clean out all the stuff we've been storing in the guest room. So for the moment, I'm spending my breathing time deep cleaning my house, room by room, making space elsewhere to put that stuff. It feels good to dejunk a bit, and my house certainly needs the cleaning.

Scripture Journal

My cousin Kim asked about my scripture journal. It's just a three-ring binder of lined paper that I keep next to me when I'm reading my scriptures. I start a page for each chapter I read. I write down thoughts I have about what I'm reading, helpful cross references, questions about things I don't understand. I can't remember where I got the idea, but I started it almost four years ago at a time when I was feeling the need to recommit myself to scripture study (January of course :-). I had lost count of how many times I had read 1st Nephi, so I started in Mosiah (with King Benjamin's speech--my favorite). It's slow-going--I'm just finishing Ether. Much as I try, I don't read every day, and writing slows the reading down, but I feel like my study is more meaningful, more personal, and more worthwhile. Occasionally I get writing and my thoughts just takes off, connecting things from the scriptures with what's going on in my life or in the world. I'd like to think that this kind of scripture study helps me be more open to the Spirit and to personal revelation, but what I notice mostly is that it helps me keep my mind on spiritual things and more in tune with what is really important--the gospel of Jesus Christ and my efforts to draw nearer to Him. Since I'm almost done with the second half of the Book of Mormon, I'm thinking about journaling about the most recent General Conference talks too, before I start with 1st Nephi again.

General Conference

Jeff and I had the opportunity to attend the Sunday morning session of April General Conference with my parents in the Conference Center. The Tabernacle Choir was beautiful and inspiring. I liked Craig Jessop as the director, but Mack Wilberg has a different style that I think is going to take the choir to new heights. And of course it was nice to be able to focus on the talks without the inevitable distractions of four little kids--thanks to my parents for the tickets and to Jeff's parents for babysitting! However, I think I actually got more out of conference for me personally from some of the other sessions. I felt the Spirit as I sat in my mini-van Sat. morning listening to the solemn assembly before running in to the rec center to pick Ryan up from his basketball clinic. I know the Spirit was testifying to me that President Monson is the prophet chosen by God to lead us at this time. I was motivated to be a better mother, especially now while my kids are young (Elder Ballard and others), and to try harder to make my home a place where "the storm stops at the door" (President Monson). I was also impressed to keep trying to live the gospel without apology--to keep my standards high and to share my testimony boldly by the way I live, as well as in words. Sometimes with kids it is hard to concentrate and really feel like I've been able to feast on General Conference. This time instead of trying to hear every word and feeling frustrated when it didn't happen, I just tried to listen with my heart to everything that I could. I feel like I did feast and I heard and sensed what I needed to guide my life right now. What a blessing!